Sunday, September 03, 2006

Writing Hacks

Getting started with writing is something real difficult. Whether its writing a blog entry, or an essay, or an article or some time even a elaborate email explaining some specific scenario of a project and the implication due to same. Speaking and writing are two different skills. A guy who speaks well need not be a good writer always. Writing has its own hacks. Scott Berkun has posted a very good essay titled Writing Hacks – Part 1. The essay brings out good insights on how to get started with writing something. The essay teaches good hacks such as starting with single word, then a sentence and then the whole thing. Overcoming psychological barrier of getting started with writing is something every one has to deal with in their life at some point of time. Even for me, I had hard time putting together my first posting on this blog. Even though it was just an introduction but still you write something then erase it and then write something else and on and on.

Scott Berkun is always a good read. He has a unique and intriguing style of writing. And when he shares the tips on how to get started with writing and how to write better, then it should be great. Whether its writing something or doing a painting, or designing a UI for an application or sometime even writing a piece of code, for all of this you have to break a similar kind of barrier. How to get started? And once you get going it becomes easier. For me writing a piece of code appears to be easy now then what it was before 3 years. All this because I have been doing it for quite sometime. Same would be the case with writing. Once you get going for sometime, you become more comfortable. Another thing, which I felt was a major barrier for writing something, is the concern for quality of content. You read lot stuff here and there and you feel that you should be writing of the same quality. I overcame this by thinking as of I writing for my self. It does help in getting started. Once you have confidence you can expose your writings on the blogs, etc.